A 10-a editie a Seminarului National de nanostiinta si nanotehnologie 18 mai 2011 Biblioteca Academiei Romane SULFONATED POLYETHERETHERKETONE COMPOSITE MEMBRANES FOR FUEL CELLS APPLICATIONS C. Baicea, S.I. Voicu, V.I. Luntraru, O. Gales Universitatea Politehnica Bucuresti, Facultatea de Chimie Aplicata si Stiinta Materialelor INTRODUCTION: The increase of energy consumption and the problem of environmental protection represent enough reasons for new energy sources with a lower impact for environment. The fuel cells devices respond to these requests, due to their emissions and better yields. The synthesis and characterization of two different composite membranes, sulfonated polyetheretherketone-polypyrrole and sulfonated polyetheretherketone-polyaniline are presented. ACKNOWLEDGMENT: The work has been funded by the Sectorial Operational Programme Human Resources Development of the Romanian Ministry of Labour, Family and Social Protection through the Financial Agreement POSDRU/88/1.5/S/60203 (project that financed Cristina Baicea) and POSDRU/88/1.5/S/61178 (project that financed Vlad Ionut Luntraru). Authors also recognise financial support from the European Social Fund through POSDRU/89/1.5/S/54785 project: "Postdoctoral Program for Advanced Research in the field of nanomaterials (project that financed Stefan Ioan Voicu). SYNTHESIS - sPEEK composite membranes: polyetheretherketone (M = g/mol) was disolved in sulfuric acid H 2 SO 4 96% (5% wt.) and the membranes were obtained by the phase inversion process from the sPEEK solution. Pyrrole, respectively aniline, were sprayed on the support membranes which were then immersed in a polymerization bath with a FeCl 3 solution, respectively FeCl 3, HCl and water; - functionalization of conductive polymers: solutions of Ce(SO 4 ) 2 and FeCl 3, respectively poly-styrene sulfonic acid were used. CHARACTERIZATION CONCLUSIONS Figure 1. SEM images of sPEEK/Ppy (a) and sPEEK/PANi (b) composite membranes. Figure 2. FT-IR spectrum of sPEEK/Ppy composite membrane functionalized with Ce(SO 4 ) 2 (a) and sPEEK/PANi composite membrane functionalized with poly-styrene sulfonic acid (b). a b a b Table 1. The capacitance and ionic conductivity of sPEEK/Ppy and sPEEK/PANi composite membranes. The membranes were synthesized by in situ polymerization of polypyrrole, respectively polyaniline, on the sPEEK membrane also obtained by phase inversion process. The polymerization of the conductive polymers can be observed from the SEM microscopy and FT-IR spectroscopy. In the FT-IR spectrum of the functionalized composite membranes the specific bands for sPEEK (the peak at 1250 cm -1 attributed to the etheric bond (C-O- C), the peak at 1640 cm -1 attributed to conjugated ketonic bond (C=O)), Ppy (the peak at 880 cm-1 attributed to =C– bond outside the vibration plane and the large band from 3310 to 3350 cm-1 given by the secondary N-H stretch vibration), respectively PANi (the peak at 1523 and 1485 cm -1 due to the presence of quinoid and benzenoid rings) can be observed. To evaluate the ionic conductive properties Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy analyses were performed.